Apr. 6, 2014
04:32 pm JST

I think Tony is well aware of Japan,s inflexibility on opening its agriculture to outside competition. The word " swift" is.simply not compatible with Japan,s business negotiation practices.
By contrast PM Abbott will be officially signing an FTA with SK in.Seoul during the trip. Japan needs to stop being so inflexible on agriculture or it will never conclude anything..be it TPP or a meaningful bilateral FTA. It's Japan,s.choice in the end but don't come whining about being disadvantaged against SK or other countries willing to make the hard decisions later.

Apr. 6, 2014
07:12 pm JST

The Japanese tend to forget that there are many countries lining up to get Australian exports. Japan needs the produce more than Australia needs their business and that wombat Abbot should be making this very clear to them.

Apr. 6, 2014
09:04 pm JST

Ron Barnes - Toyota and all the Japanese car companies in Oz have been nothing but money pits for the Oz-gov for many years and the Oz-gov has poured millions of bucks into supporting them. The only reason Toyota pulled out was because the Oz-give refused to bail them out again.

Apr. 6, 2014
09:28 pm JST

Actually, Toyota are closing because Ford and GM have both announced their departures from Austral manufacturing. I suspect the "give us money or stupid gets it" was more FoMoCo's and GM's method than Toyota's in Australia.

And when Ford US and GM (US) fell on hard times and needed US Government bailouts in 2008, their Australian operations basically were on borrowed time (small branch office in an out-of-the-way location building a product that neither parent company were too interested in supporting or exporting).

Apr. 7, 2014
02:17 am JST

This is great news for both countries. Japan will have access to cheaper dairy imports from Australia, and Australia will benefit from cheaper cars & consumer electronics. There are reports that a car costing AUD$30,000 (about 2.8m yen) will be about $1,500 (~ 130,000 yen) cheaper from this deal alone.

However, knowing how Japan works, the bureaucrats controlling Japanese dairy products (especially from Hokkaido) will have something to say about this. Let's see how much longer we're forced to pay exorbitant prices for things like cheese & butter!

Apr. 7, 2014
10:56 am JST

The only reason Australia had tariffs on imported vehicles in the first place was to protect their local car manufacturing industry, but since all major manufacturers in Australia are closing up, the tariffs are redundant and likely to disappear anyway, so it's not the bargaining chip the Australians would like it to appear to be.

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